This isn't always the best option, I've changed the default sort order of the LoveMoissanite.com store to be by Rating (Highest First) - which makes a bit more sense, since you want visitors to see the highest-rating items first, since these are likely to be your most popular products.

By default, for items with no rating - they are shown by Product ID order, the order you've added them to your shop.
(this is also helpful, since usually you'll add different versions of the same item, or related items one after another).

Very interesting! I've been asking on here if anyone knew of a way to change the default view of products in Category pages to Latest Products. It appears from this How To that on the surface, a 'Lowest Ratings' option would achieve the same result.

However, I wouldn't want my client's customers to see his products as being Lowest Rated [he doesn't actually have a use for the Ratings Feature itself as his products are mostly one-offs] but wondered if it were as simple to change the wording on the drop-down menu to 'Latest Arrivals' and to delete the ratings feature itself from all other pages [Product Description List & Review Tab]?

& have managed to successfully remove all references to 'Reviews' throughout site.
Also have utilized $rating_ASC to sort the initial Category's Products list & changed $text_rating_ASC to 'Latest Arrivals' in drop-down Select box. However, would now need to remove the $text_rating_DESC option & am not sure were to comment out.

Thought I'd add; since changing the sort order as above, I experience a weird anomaly if I then change the number of items which appear on the page in category.php in controller [+pagination to match]. It seems to throw the order right out of whack & can't seem to find a reason in the spreadsheet as nothing has changed there.

I took a fresh look at this and made a change similar to Skyhigh's recommendation so that categories would sort by 'Name A-Z' instead of 'Default'. It works this way just fine, but was wondering if the more correct modification would be to change the definition of 'Default' (which I believe is product_id for 1.4.9.1, but please correct me if I'm wrong).

Or, is it really a '6 of one and 1/2 a dozen of the other' type thing?

I am fairly new at this so if it seems I am asking a stupid question I apologize, but, I have just tried to insert the code for sorting by quantity but it has not done anything. Do i need to do anything else apart from copying the above code into line 64?? Any help would be useful. (also if you can show me a "cut out" i.e. a few lines of text before, so that I know for sure I have put the code in the right place that would also help me out alot Also for me it do not need this to be the default option I just want to have it in the drop down menu so my clients can use it when necessary.

Please I'm trying to do a product sorting by quantity in stock first in my web page www.splatwar.com that is running 1.5.4
I have edited category.php according to what is stated in these post but nothing happens or changes at all. I also edited further to text_quanitity and in other parts of the php file where I could read something regarding the default sorting but I'm not and expert on php and dont know exactly what to do.

As I can see on dates and everything these post should was created for 1.4 as also my catalog.php file has a different structure and on line 64 I have a complete different line.

So please please please can someone help me resolving these for my 1.5.4 store. I really need the products on stock to be showed first to all my clients and then the ones without stock or preorders now everything is mixed and ugly.

Also these should be a regular sorting method on open cart as it seams the more logical one.

Hello, i'm new one, I'm using Opencart ver. 1.5.6 and i wanted to change the default sorting of products in categories - the last added products to be first. And this is what i've done:
In catalog/controller/product/category.php
at line 21 change